Frustrated!!! Black ink needed to be replaced so I purchased an HP564XL cartridge. Small cartridge is empty. After replacing XL I can not get anything to print in black. Solution? Please!

There are a few things to check: first see the troubleshooting steps in this document. Be sure to check the vents are clear as shown in Solution 3. Also make sure the media type in the driver is set to Plain Paper rather than Automatic - if the printer incorrectly detects the media as photo paper it will use the (empty) photo black cartridge for text.

I think you might have hit upon the root cause of this problem. Would you please give a brief outline of the procedure to clean the return bay felts & brush? I still cannot get mine (C309a) to print color and am hoping that these procedures (soaking & cleaning return bay) might help. Thanks

Just wanted to THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart or ink :-) barrel...your solution worked like a gem. Good work. I found this solution two nights ago and it worked yesterday so I have to find you and thank you personally. You just save me a whole bunch of frustration. Thank you again! Chita

Re: HP Photosmart C309a won't print

I have an HP a6110n desktop computer and running Windows Vista. At the beginning of this adventure I had to totally re install my computer after some hardware issues. Which meant starting from scratch with a reinstall of Winiodws Vista, all the updates, all of the other software programs I use (MS Office, Adobe....), and all the other hardware.

One of which is my HP Photosmart Premium Printer (C309n).....which meant re installing all of that software. After doing that, my printer would print test pages and other docs in the 'Tools' menu on the printer pad, photos, would scan perfectly....it all worked.

EXCEPT printing from my desktop to the printer ANY documents from MS Office and Adobe (the two computer programs I use daily) that required black ink....or should I say just printing normal docs. FRUSTRATING!!!!

So......after weeks of researching online and calling others with questions on how to fix my printer.....here's what I've learned:

You're printer is fine! (as long as you have ink in your cartridges)

The problem is in the Color Management of your settings for the printer.

So here are the exact steps that I did to remedy the problem:

1) click on your start menu or the Windows logo in the lower left corner of Vista

2) click on 'Control Panel' ( on the right side of the list of options)

3) There will be a green labeled 'Hardware and Sound' heading and under that it says 'Printer' in blue. Click on that. (if you are using 'Classic View' for Control Panel it will be alphabetically under 'Printers')

4) A new box opens and the printer icon (make sure it's not the 'fax' icon) you are using will have a checkmark on it. Right click on that. At the bottom of that box click on 'Properties'.

5) A new window will pop up and most likely will default to the first tab labeled 'General' (if not click on the tab labeled 'General')

6) At the bottom of that click on the box labeled 'Printing Preferences'.

7) A new window pops up and you want to click on the tab 'Features'

8) In the lower left corner of that box there is a drop down menu labled 'Color Management:' and at this point it might have in the box "Colorsmart/sRGB'. This is what you DON'T want. So click on the box and you should have a choice of 'Application Managed Colors' ...... and that is what you DO want. So click on that.

9) Make sure to click on the word 'APPLY' in the lower right hand corner after you have chosen this.

10) After that click on 'OK'. That box will then close and return you to the Properties box.

11) Now you should be at the properties box and at the 'General' tab. Again, you want to click on the word 'APPLY' in the lower right hand corner. And then click on the 'OK' box to the left of that.

12) Your properties box will close. You can exit out of 'Control Panel' now.

Note: If anywhere during this process it asks if you want this to be the default answer with Yes or OK.

Test this out by printing a document from the software applications your having trouble with. It should work.

I have no idea how or why this happened to begin with. To get to this point I had removed and reinstalled my printer software numerous times. I had tried every possible solution. But the fact remained that all tests and photos would print just fine. The only things affected were the documents I was trying to print.

I do have to say thank you to FrustratedC309a and his reference towards 'brownsly' (another user). Without their initial thread I never would have figured this out. My sympotoms were exactly the same (black text was not printing at all in most cases or sometimes in very, very light gray....).

UpdateI have removed all stress by removing the HP from the house and replaced it with a Brother Printer MFC-J875DW. Cost 99.00Prints ok and hooked up ASAP to the network and works with all phones including Apple.So in short do yourself a favour and get another printer it sure paid off for me.

REAL SOLUTION. I had same experience, spent hours pulling my hair out as kids had project do at school and it was 10pm. Your carriage is clogged! HERE IS THE FIX!! : 1) Remove all ink cartridges. 2) Remove carriage that the ink cartridges ride in by lifting lever on right and lifting the carriage vertically. 3) Wipe off any ink build-up visible on outside with clean rag or paper towel. 4) THIS IS THE KEY: Hold carriage under hot flowing water to flush all ink from the irrigation channels which distribute ink. Keep rinsing until water in clear i.e. no signs of ink. 5) Dry carriage with clean rag and blow into areas you can access to flush water remnants. 6)Let carriage air dry over night. 7) Re-install carriage, then re-install ink cartridges. 8) ENJOY YOUR PRINTER.

Thank you! I followed this procedure (well, except for the dry cartridge over night...I needed to print NOW) and it worked! I had been receiving missing or damaged cartridge errors that I could not clear, making the printer useless. As per other suggestions, I used luke warm water for the rinsing and the lowest heat setting on the hair dryer. While the carriage was out, I also cleaned up some of the ink goop inside the printer (now I know why my cartridges empty so quickly...it's all dumped on the sponges and brushes when the printer cycles!). Hopefully this will be a long term solution, but at least it got me through last night's crisis! When the carriage is reinstalled, it goes through a 4+minute initialization process and then a 4+minute cartridge alignment process.

I saved the torment and went and bought a new Brother for 99 4 months ago and still haven't changed the ink cartridges. It works so good I often wonder why I didn't garbage the HP long before that.Simply leave the HP world and you will be pleased.